While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this summer that juveniles convicted of murder cannot automatically be sentenced to life-without-parole sentences, Northampton County judges have so far refused to extend the ruling to those who killed as young adults.

Locally, about a dozen convicted murderers who took a life when they were between the ages of 18 and 22 have sought to reduce their lifetime sentences under the court's summer ruling.

In Miller v. Alabama, the high court ruled murderers under the age of 18 are inherently too immature to fully grasp the consequences of their actions and should only be sentenced to life without parole in extreme circumstances. The inmates who killed as young adults have argued the same logic should apply to them, because people don't suddenly become mature upon reaching legal adulthood.

Daniel Graves, the oldest Northampton County convicted killer to appeal, requested a judge reconsider his life-without-parole sentence for the 1972 murder of Sebastiano Patiri, a 75-year-old Easton recluse. Graves, who has watched from behind bars as the legal system evolved around him in the last 40 years, was high on LSD when he and two others went into Patiri's home on West Berwick Street and killed him. According to reports, he had no memory of the attack and had to be told what happened the next morning.

"There is no reason why those differences would not warrant the same conclusion for defendants in their mid-20s," Graves wrote in his request.

In a ruling handed down Wednesday, however, Judge Michael Koury dismissed Graves' motion. Under the law, Koury wrote, he is prohibited from considering anything except the law as it exists, so he could not apply Graves' logic even if he wanted to do so.

District Attorney John Morganelli said today Northampton County judges have used the same reasoning to toss out every similar appeal except one: a motion from 1982 murderer James Grimes. No decision has been reached yet in Grimes' case, Morganelli said, but he was confident the same conclusion would be reached.

At this point, the cases are beginning to be appealed up to state Superior Court, but Morganelli said he has not bothered to see how other cases around the state are being handled. The law is extraordinarily clear on the matter, with the defendant's 18th birthday serving as the dividing point, the district attorney said.